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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1284372" data-attributes="member: 3146">Hmm. I'll take a brief moment to register where I'm coming from.1. I agree with Lord Pendragon that the idea of  resisting evil with violence being evil--if perhaps necessary--is repugnant.2. I think Barsoomcore's separation of game-mechanical and "philosophical" good and evil is also suspect (although not in the way that he applies it in his campaign since he doesn't deal with game mechanical good/evil). If a [Good] act can be evil and an [Evil] act can be good then the word good is nothing more than an arbitrary label for [Good] acts and is devoid of any real significance.That said, I think that the biggest change for a society that viewed war as necessary but still evil would be that it would be unable to formulate the concept of a positive duty to fight for kin and country. Or if it were able to formulate such a concept, it would be empty words lacking the emotional ties to translate it into action. Generally, good people are unwilling to compel others to do something evil--even if they consider it necessary themselves.I would see the idea as developing in a highly successful yet decadent culture. It would be quite possible that it was only in vogue among the intelligentia of that culture and that the lower classes--and perhaps a portion of the upper classes that rejected the dominant strain of the culture--would continue to conceive of just war as a positive duty. . . and something that is good. In that case, the intelligentia would be defended by the class of people that they labored to destroy. Pragmatic leaders of the country might pay their soldiers well but soldiers would not be honored among the cultural elite--except perhaps the rare soldier who had come to reject his trade or to see himself as sacrificing his morality to allow others to enjoy an untrammeled conscience. In fact, successful soldiering would probably be a mark of dishonor and might stand in the way of social and economic success.If the culture became more dominant, the nation might find that its pragmatic leaders recruited soldiers from the barbaric lands surrounding them. The defenders of the society would no longer be a part of it; they would be foreigners who were unwelcome in many influential circles because of their moral taint. This would also mean that the loyalty of these forces would probably be less certain than it would otherwise be and that the leaders of the nation would be hesitant to use force lest they suffer in the opinions of those that they lead. (Even Roman emperors needed to heed the opinions of their society--they didn't give the people bread and circusses out of the kindness of their heart).The culture's relations to its neighbors would most likely become more appeasement oriented and less assertive. During this time, it is likely that other cultures would rise and begin to rival the economic success of culture that thought war to be a necessary evil.Eventually, those other cultures would supplant the decadant and pliant culture--reducing it to a tributary and largely irrelevant backwater known for diplomacy and self-righteousness if they were generous or reducing it to a nation of slaves or a nation of ghosts if they weren't.Speaking of ghosts, the rules of D&D do provide a few mechanisms whereby the decline of this civilization might be delayed or possibly even have its course changed. A pragmatic leader, seeing the hesitance of his countrymen to provide the force he thought necessary, might well turn to necromancy to make up the difference. Unlike foreign mercenaries, the loyalty of the undead would be secure. Some individuals might even be convinced to "sacrifice" themselves by becoming free-willed undead who could protect their countrymen. (Note the philosophical point here: the force that animates these individuals is the notion of defensive war as a positive duty and an admirable good--a position rejected by the dominant culture. Those these individuals set out to protect might understand but would not appreciate, admire, or honor the sacrifice). Whether this would work or whether they would find that the bargain they had made twisted their souls and made them into fiends who ravaged the very people they set out to protect would depend upon the DM's view of undead and necromancy. (I, however, would prefer the view that such an act would corrupt the individuals such that, by embracing an unholy means to a just end, they not only destroyed their souls but also failed to achieve their desired end--rather like the version of the Dracula legend found at the beginning of _Bram Stoker's Dracula_). This would possibly provide a way that such a culture might endure (its borders defended by powerful uncorrupted undead who are not necessarily influenced by the culture's disdain of their methods) or degenerate in a different direction (becoming a nation of rapacious evil under the malign protection of its undead "benefactors").A more generic, mythal-like magical defense could also be erected by the ancestors of the culture, enabling them to moralize in safety without placing themselves at the mercy of neighboring aggressors.</blockquote>

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